Joystick w/ Adaptive Centering vs old Joystick Camera

drive.google.c...
follow that link to download the program in the video. You must unzip it, then add it to steam as a non steam game and launch it from steam with a controller connected for it to work.
drive.google.c...
this file is my config for it that includes old joystick camera.
• Which is faster? Touch...
this short shows the purpose of the counters; its to test how fast you can make "inputs" (defined as a cycle of near full deflection of the virtual stick and it returning to center then repeat) on either the trackpad or joystick.

[@sq_paradox]

This was super useful for finding exactly what to change in the vdf to get joystick camera. I wanted to try it for my Starfield flight action layer to see if it was better than joystick move. Mouse joystick isn't great for flight hence the action layer but it's still nice on gyro for those fine inputs. Turns out I like joystick move better for this, but only after setting a custom deadzone (since I zeroed out the right stick deadzone in the game's ini). Joystick camera actually worked great for controlling the ship, maybe even better than joystick move, but without the edge haptics telling me I was at 100% output it just felt like I wasn't ever reaching 100% output. I did run into a crash Steam when I was trying to set the deadzone for joystick move in the flight layer, I would go into settings, it would freeze for a second and then just crash Steam. I ended up settings the deadzone I wanted without the layer and then manually transfering it in the vdf. That's why I was in the vdf, which gave me the idea to try joystick camera. Interesting part is that that solved the crash, so my guess is there's an error in setting initialization there. I'm going to try to repeat those steps and try to create the crash and then report it. We really don't want hard crashes in the Steam Input configurator.

[@Ryochan7]

I never liked the old behavior of adaptive centering. It felt wonky to me. The new mode might be useful if it behaved differently. I will probably make a version for my Steam Controller mapper. Would just use simpler logic and flag whether the dead zone was ever touched. The response curve would be the same.

[@Mennenth]

My main 2 problems with old Joystick Camera: Like all Joystick modes (except mouse-like/"as joystick"), it lacks the rotation setting. Smooth Joystick and Swipe Duration had no associated haptics. If both of those were fixed, honestly I would have preferred using Joystick Camera over Mouse-Like Joystick/"as joystick". The combination of smooth joystick and swipe duration made it act like trackball emulation on mouse-like, only far smoother. Perhaps I should make a video on that too.

[@KuroOnehalf]

How does one go about applying this to a game that doesn't show the option?

[@Mennenth]

you have to manually edit the config vdf's. they are just text documents, notepad++ works well for editing them. however, you do have to know the names of the features and where to put them. I may make a video on it at some point...

[@KuroOnehalf]

@@Mennenth Hmm, I'm not quite sure where to find them. For example I was trying to tweak it for DQ11, and I find a controller.vdf in "Steam\steamapps\common\DRAGON QUEST XI S Demo\Engine\Config", but it seems to have most settings blank.

[@DaMu24]

I'm really conflicted on your conclusion to this. It feels like there's a significant bug in the advanced settings for new Joystick. The fact that, in new Adaptive Centering, you have to return to center to have it work and the deadzone either cannot be adjusted or does not affect the behavior of the stick should be a big indicator of this bug. I wouldn't assume that Valve won't fix this because lol. Don't conclude that a feature is depreciated without actual word from Valve that it is, or it just disappears by next Big Picture revision. The mode change in new Big Picture looks like an incomplete merge of the legacy Joystick modes, but how it lays out now is for the better. Why have multiple Joystick modes when you can have only one and move the less-used or more-complex version to the one's settings? Valve owes fixes, but I'm sure Valve is more concerned with getting Steam Deck's default config and Xbox controller settings working, because that will be how the majority of their user base use Steam, not with controllers using touchpads emulating sticks like on Dualshock/sense or Steam Controller.

[@Mennenth]

This "new" adaptive centering isnt exactly new. The full time line was Joystick with adaptive centering as an option, then a "separation" of it into joystick move that doesnt have ac as an option and joystick camera that has it (or rather a different version of it) baked in along with a couple of other settings available, and now back to not having joystick camera but having ac available on joystick. I read a report on the steam forums that the old adaptive centering also kind of worked the way this "new" version does. Perhaps it is buggy, but if thats the case its been around for a very long time and Valves solution back then was to simply disable it and make a whole new input mode. I do agree that having 1 joystick mode with way more options built into would be better overall though. I'm just a bit jaded at Valve at this point. I actually did make an entire spreadsheet of everything old and new bpm has in order to find all the missing things. The list is a lot bigger than you'd expect. I've been meaning to make a video on it, just havent gotten around to it due to life. That said, I did pass that off to a Valve employee directly. The immediate response was "some may get added back, but a lot is depreciated"... including the steam controllers own firmware updater (that now has to be done through an external cli tool, which users have reported has had mixed results including soft bricking some sc's by botching the update). And of course people - not just me - have been asking for the return of the big picture mode configuration so we can actually change the bindings for the new ui itself for... A while now. That would benefit everyone, but Valve still hasnt done anything about that major oversight.